Tell HN: X stopped requiring authentication, nitter works again

https://nitter.lucabased.xyz/x

by o999 • 2 years ago

120 74 2 years ago

nitter.lucabased.xyz

Has it? I see this:

    Instance has been rate limited.
    Use another instance or try again later.

toomuchtodo5• 2 years ago

Potentially related:

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-168...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970676

bloopernova• 2 years ago

Linked GitHub comment is from August 2023.

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

I applaud people who do whatever is possible to work around an issue. But it just gives me tremendous anxiety to imagine trying to run a product using hacks like “proxy thousands of guest accounts”

This feels like those hilarious and fascinating projects to glue together free tier services or use YouTube or email for data storage or whatnot.

lolinder5• 2 years ago

I tried using nitter the other day to view my utility company's tweets and got that message on three different instances before finally giving up.

Twitter doesn't work any more without an account, and it's high time we in the tech world led out in refusing to participate in a platform that deliberately locks its content up behind an auth wall. Twitter links don't belong on HN, convoluted sometimes-functional workarounds notwithstanding.

dumbo-octopus3• 2 years ago

You can view an accounts tweets without logging in.

EGreg3• 2 years ago

And what alternatives do you suggest?

HN rightly complains about proprietary closed platforms, and enshittification.

Here is an open source alternative to Twitter and Facebook: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform

wannacboatmovie2• 2 years ago

it's high time we in the tech world led out in refusing to participate in a platform that deliberately locks its content up behind an auth wall.

Maybe the tech world should stop using bots to rape and pillage user-generated content without payment to feed their AI models no one asked for.

Which is what caused X to install the auth wall in the first place.

toomuchtodo5• 2 years ago

Have you asked your utility to post status updates on Mastodon? Explain the challenges of consuming their updates on X, and why their customer base would be better served elsewhere. If not, you should do so. If they need someone to manage the instance for them, we can find them a commercial provider. Failing that, have them create a Threads account with federation enabled. Default to action, be the change.

The eyeballs go where the content is; tell the content where to go.

Edit: @edflsafoiewq Why are we ignoring their uses cases? If they feel the need (outages, relevant customer information) and have the desire to have the mechanism in addition to or in lieu of email, paper mail, and/or SMS, enable them. The cost is very low to do so.

fallingsquirrel• 2 years ago

Really now? Please don't credit X for this. Nitter operators are working hard behind the scenes to keep as many usable IPs and accounts in operation as they can. Give credit where credit is due.

hkt• 2 years ago

This is nice and all, but also let's not forget that X can arbitrarily undo this decision too. Remember folks, fediverse.

OutOfHere• 2 years ago

X will keep playing games to optimize their user count. I suggest not falling for these games. I have already Xed out X from my life.

yborg• 2 years ago

Most of the HN crowd is the long tail. The vast majority will continue to use whatever mass surveillance/monetization platform their friends use and so news outlets, government bodies, etc. will continue to post on that platform. You can either throw in the towel and join the masses or continue to use technical means of circumvention to access information there when necessary.

ffsm85• 2 years ago

Very, very few average people actually use Twitter/X

It's significants was always massively overstated in tech circles and various echo chambers.

asadotzler• 2 years ago

Twitter is used by about 5% of online people. They're an obnoxious 5% but they're really not that big of a group. I mean, Microsoft has about 25% of online users. Facebook has bout 35% of online people and Google has almost 60% of online users. Twitter is tiny.

wkat42424• 2 years ago

I do the latter yes. I use SearXNG to shield my searches, I use matrix bridges to keep the privacy invading chat apps off my phone. I use a local LLM and home assistant to shield from datamining IoT. I run DNS based and in browser adblockers.

It's a lot of work but I still consider it very viable. It's also very educational.

The problem is just that it doesn't scale. Google will block SearXNG if it becomes more than a fringe phenomenon used by some geeks. WhatsApp will start fighting bridges again if significant amounts of people start using it.

I don't really care about fixing society as a whole to be honest, but it's important to realise that this can never be a solution for everyone, even when talking the technical difficulty level out of the loop. These things work because they are niche.

paulnpace• 2 years ago

I thought this the point of nitter?

dragontamer• 2 years ago

It's not working for me...

I'm guessing it was working an hour ago when this was first posted?

--------

EDIT: I dunno what happened. I tried again right now and it looks like it's working. Maybe the first page cache had issues or something on my phone?

sva_2• 2 years ago

There are some nitter instances that work, but they probably just use a lot of accounts.

Posting them on the frontpage may not contribute to their longevity.

mgiannopoulos• 2 years ago

A couple of these instances have been working for several weeks now. They don’t always have recent data and have resource limits , but they work.

hypeatei2• 2 years ago

I don't understand the attraction to Twitter especially after Musk took over. If you're not logged in, the site barely works which prevents a lot of people from seeing your post or staying up-to-date.

I thought for sure the rebrand + enshittification would completely kill it but I guess some are still latching on for some reason.

criddell• 2 years ago

It’s not Twitter itself, it’s the people and conversations. Probably the same reason you use HN.

badsectoracula• 2 years ago

some are still latching on for some reason.

Reason being the network effect. I'd rather use Mastodon but everyone i'd follow posts on Twitter - even the people i follow on Mastodon at best put the same posts on Twitter and -way more often than not- barely put anything on Mastodon.

hypeatei2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I thought the network effect would be "wow this site is even more garbage than before" and then go somewhere else, but I guess not.

kmeisthax• 2 years ago

There's a few communities stubbornly remaining on Twitter for some reason. In particular, communities built around anything coming out of Japan - e.g. rhythm games, anime, or vtubers.

toyg• 2 years ago

An better competitor would likely kill twitter in less than a year.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be one. Mastodon is significantly worse in so many ways, for normal people. Other services are not significantly better, which makes it impossible to break the huge network effects that Twitter/X have built over more than a decade.

clot27• 2 years ago

No it doesn't, try xcancel.com instead, works most of the time

Aaronn• 2 years ago

That's literally an instance of Nitter

mamonster• 2 years ago

I've been using nitter.poast.org for the last 3-4 months at least.

It works fine 90% of the time, but sometimes there are too many people trying to use it and the connection gets timed out. If you refresh 5-6 times, it usually becomes fine.

tempest_• 2 years ago

Presumably it has some accounts it is rotating through and they are being rate limited in some capacity.

alecco• 2 years ago

Let's not hammer the nitter instance of last resort.

sva_2• 2 years ago

Aaand... it's gone.

fngjdflmdflg• 2 years ago

Should the tittle be changed? The link doesn't explicitly say what the OP says.

vlaaad• 2 years ago

*Twitter stopped requiring authentication.

eastbound• 2 years ago

Funny how we talked about it 24hrs ago on HN.

Does Elon Musk read HN and did he suddenly realized how much of a mistake it had been, how much it harmed the platform to require login, moving people on to Mastodon or others? Seems typical from him to move in 24hrs.

a2128• 2 years ago

Really? I just tried visiting a friend's twitter page in incognito mode and it just redirects to the sign-in page. Only big accounts like @X, @POTUS or @iaeaorg seem to not trigger the auth wall

wkat42424• 2 years ago

It's kinda funny that the link proposed here is only ads for Twitter premium, lol

maxglute• 2 years ago

There's still a few working nitter instances, but they're far from reliable.

raxxorraxor• 2 years ago

Makes it much more viable to be the platform Twitter tried to be from the start. It seemingly was such a bad move to require auth...

2-3-7-43-1807• 2 years ago

one of the few online sites where "rate limited" errors are a feature and not a bug - as far as I am concerned.

Tell HN: X stopped requiring authentication, nitter works again

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